For almost 20 years, Construction Specialties, Inc., the assignee of the present invention, has been marketing a line of wall protection products under the trademark "Acrovyn.RTM.." The line currently includes several styles of handrails, bumper guards, corner guards and crash rails, all of which have either continuous metal retainers or metal mounting clips or brackets that are attached to a wall and that receive cover members of an impact resistant, substantially rigid polymeric material. In most of the "Acrovyn.RTM." products, the cover members are mounted on the retainers or clips in a manner such they can deflect and deform under impacts from objects carried or rolled near to them. The deflection and deformation of the cover members absorb some of the energy of the impact, which prevents damage to the underlying wall. The "Acrovyn.RTM." handrails not only fulfill the function of protecting the walls on which they are mounted but provide support for persons walking through the building; thus, they are widely used in hospitals and nursing homes, places where equipment carts, food carts, wheelchairs and patient litters are constantly moving about and are apt to strike the walls and infirm patients are walking through corridors and other spaces, oftentimes for therapeutic exercise that is important to their speedy recovery, and rely on the handrails for support.
Some styles of "Acrovyn.RTM." handrails and handrails of similar designs marketed by others have handgrip portions that consist of only semi-cylindrical upper surfaces that lack a defined gripping portion that can be grasped firmly between the fingers and the thumb. Although such handrails are entirely adequate from the point of view of being capable of supporting the infirm patients that use them, they do not provide as secure a grip for the patients as a round rail does. Round rails, on the other hand, present essentially a line of contact to objects that strike them and are more apt to be marred and less able to absorb energy than are the designs that have a wide face, particularly a wide face that is also deformable and deflectable.
Relatively recently, handrails of the type that consist of a metal retainer and an impact-resistant cover member and that combine a generally round handgrip portion and a wide impact portion have been introduced. All of the three designs that the present inventor is aware of have one or more disadvantages. Two of them provide for contact between the cover member and the retainer in the handgrip portion along spaced-apart lines or bands, leaving regions of the cover member that are not well supported. Two of them have handgrip portions that are round in front and along the top but have a corner at the rear that presents an uncomfortable gripping portion for the fingers. One of them has a V-shaped juncture between the handgrip portion and the bumper portion that does not leave enough room for the thumb. One of them has a handgrip portion that is formed by three flat surfaces, which is not ergonomically correct. Two of them have frontal protuberances, which limits the zone for impact absorption and concentrates all marring along a narrow band. All three have a single cover member, which restricts the opportunities for architects and designers to create aesthetic interest by using different colors and shades and also is somewhat limiting on the configurations of the retainer and the cover from a functional point of view, in that the cover and retainer have to be designed to enable the cover to be snapped onto the retainer.